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RE: NRC's Patient Release Rule



Even a medical physicist has found the some of the info new or insightful.
I will add my concerns about the landfill radiation detection systems.  I
have read about garbage containers being sent away from landfills because
they set off the radiation alarm systems.  I visited our local site and
determined that the alarm system was very sensitive.  The operators were
somewhat familiar with Tc-99m and its short half-life;  hold the container
for a couple of days and resurvey.  I-131 waste from a patient's home will
not decay in a couple of days.  My institution still follows the
conservative patient release: 33 mCi or 7 mR/h.

Charles Beasley, M.S.; DABMP


> ----------
> From: 	steve.rima@DOEGJPO.COM[SMTP:steve.rima@DOEGJPO.COM]
> Reply To: 	radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu
> Sent: 	Thursday, October 28, 1999 12:41
> To: 	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: 	RE: NRC's Patient Release Rule
> 
>      As a non-medical health physicist, I've found the exchange of ideas, 
>      accusations, etc. regarding this subject to be interesting and very 
>      enlighting. As a few others have stated, I am a little uneasy with 
>      hospitals releasing patients to the public with tens to hundreds of 
>      mCi of I-131 in them, but maybe part of that is due to my background 
>      in nuclear power and the DOE complex. My company would be fined, at 
>      the very least, if we allowed a member of the public to receive 500 
>      mrem from our activities, yet it is allowed in the medical world. 
>      Maybe someone can explain why such a double standard exists.
>      
>      I especially found the information from Peter Crane and Carol Marcus 
>      quite interesting, however, we also found out from Carol that the NRC
> 
>      is "dumb", "incompetent", "sleaze", "dangerously stupid", "useless", 
>      "dangerous", and that the NRC "Commissioners have no idea what's
> going 
>      on".
>      
>      While I have my own opinions as to certain regulatory personnel's 
>      competence, I would hope that we would not paint any agency with such
> 
>      a broad brush nor make such statements via RADSAFE.
>      
>      Steven D. Rima, CHP, CSP
>      Manager, Health Physics and Industrial Hygiene
>      MACTEC-ERS, LLC
>      steven.rima@doegjpo.com
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